Josh Gorges ready to lead Sabres out of the darkness as new season dawns

There’s plenty of heavy lifting to be done in Buffalo, and while Kelowna’s Josh Gorges is enjoying the final throngs of another Okanagan off-season, he’s also ready to return to New York State and get back to work. His Sabres have missed the playoffs the past five seasons – their longest playoff drought in the franchise’s 46-year history – and Gorges isn’t interested in making it six in a row.

Upon entering his 12th NHL season, Gorges believes improvement in his team’s performance this year will begin between the ears of each player.

“I’m excited to get back out there and get started again,” said Gorges during a recent charity 4-on-4 road hockey tournament at Immaculata Regional High School, his alma mater. “I think everyone is. When you don’t make the playoffs, it’s a long off-season. You start to get that itch to get back competing and playing. I think we took a lot of steps forward last year as a team. This off-season we’ve taken a few more. Now we’ve just got to make sure we come to camp with the right attitude. Our skills will take care of themselves. It’s our attitude and mental preparation that’s going to take us to the next level.”

As one Buffalo’s assistant captains, Gorges will continue to be looked to by fellow players, coaches, and management alike for leadership, in hopes of finally righting the Sabres’ ship this season. The 31-year old is no stranger to leading – Gorges captained the Kelowna Rockets to the Memorial Cup championship in 2004, and previously was an assistant captain of the Montreal Canadiens for two seasons. Don Cherry once pegged Gorges to be the next Montreal captain, prior to him being dealt to the Sabres in the 2014 off-season for Buffalo’s 2016 second round pick.

“I’ve kind of always thought of myself as a leader, no matter what my age was,” said Gorges, a Kelowna Minor Hockey Association graduate. “I never really have followed trends. I look up to people, I learn from good people how to be a better leader, and I try to do what I believe is right. I don’t think of myself as anything different, but I try to do what I truly believe is right and that’s gotten me to where I am today.

“My first year (in Buffalo), I was told they needed me to be a leader for our young players, and because of that, I felt like I always had to be doing something. Then I learned that you don’t necessarily have to go out and force things, you just have to be yourself. That’s the way I’ve always been. I took a step back last year, and I feel like I got more accomplished by being a little more laid back and a little more subdued than the year before.”

Gorges departure from Montreal in 2014 meant he was leaving a team that had qualified for the post-season six times and made two trips to the Eastern Conference final with him aboard, for a group that had missed the playoffs three straight years and was entering a year where they would finish dead last in the league.

As difficult as it was for Gorges to leave Montreal, it was also an opportunity for him to grow. Buffalo was a brand new environment that presented him with a fresh set of challenges and opportunities to improve.

“It was tough, I won’t hide from that fact,” Gorges admitted. “I went from an older veteran-type team to a younger, inexperienced one. It was a culture change, a transition. But it was an obstacle to overcome. You learn a lot about yourself. I feel like I changed a lot even from this last year to my first year in Buffalo – how to see things, how to deal with situations a lot differently. You experience a lot -- you take good, you take bad, you try to move forward, and you try to keep getting better as you go along.”

One of those challenges was his first year with the team – Buffalo was rumored to have been “tanking” in hopes of finishing low enough in the standings to secure the first overall pick in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft and acquire Connor McDavid. It was a year that got so bad that Buffalo’s fans were cheering for the visiting teams goals during games at their home arena, the First Niagra Center.

As for who would have ultimately been responsible for the supposed purposely futile season, Gorges feels it’s rather a rather audacious claim that his team was giving anything less than 100 per cent each night.

“Yeah it’s always tough,” Gorges said. “You understand the situation that you’re in when you get to the point where you know your team is not making the playoffs. Management has to make changes. They have to do what’s best for the team now, but they have to do what’s best for the team two, three, four and five years down the road.

“As a player, I can say that not one player in the league would ever go out there and tank a game. Nobody in their right mind would do that, and we were no different. You go out there and you play the game to win. We have pride, and you go out there and play your butt off to try and help your team win. Sometimes things are out of your control, but as players we never had that mentality. You do the best you can to not get sucked into that conversation, and you try to get it out of your mind as much as you can.”

Whether it was an intentional tank or not, the woeful seasons likely cost head coach Ted Nolan his job. Prior to joining the Sabres for his second stint as bench boss, Nolan had just finished guiding Latvia to their best-ever finish at the Olympics in 2014. But with only a challenged lineup to work with, the Sabres finished dead last both seasons he was behind their bench – the second of which Gorges was on board for – and Nolan gave way to the incumbent Dan Byslma as part of an ongoing personnel overhaul.

“I liked Ted Nolan, we had a great relationship,” Gorges recalled. “I think the situation of where the team was, where it had been for the last couple of years — a lot of young players, inexperienced players — we needed to shake up everything. You can’t necessarily fault the coach or the players or anyone in particular.

“It was a collective thing. But when those things do happen in professional sports, you need a shakeup, you need to start from the bottom. We lost six or seven players, lost our coaches. It wasn’t just the coach, we reshaped the whole team. Whether it’s fair or unfair, not for us to decide, I guess. That’s part of the business that we’re in.”

Wherever the business that is hockey takes him from here, Gorges remains thankful for the path that has been presented to him, and looks forward to many more miles of travel upon it.

“It’s been a rollercoaster,” said Gorges. “I have a lot of great memories, and lot of great moments. A lot of really amazing things that I’ve been able to be a part of. You learn a lot along the way. I’ve met a lot of amazing people, a lot of people that have helped me, players and coaches and whatnot. It’s been a fun ride. Hopefully there’s a few more years left.”